There are news reports that U.S. torture poster girl Private Lyndie England will plead guilty to abusing Iraqi detainees at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison. This no doubt was to avoid the punishment that Pvt. Charles Graner Jr received for daring to go to trial and bring the higher ups into the fray.
This is in contrast to reports out of Briton that the British Attorney General Lord Goldsmith met on February 11 2003 with four lawyers who are the architects for the legal rational for the going to war in Iraq. The lawyers were:
Alberto R. (which stands for nothing) Gonzales, Bush's controversial chief legal water boy who has been at the center of the Abu Ghraib prison abuse scandal and who finds elements of the Geneva convention "quaint" . Now promoted to attorney General for his years in protecting Bush's butt.
William Taft IV, then chief legal adviser to the then Secretary of State Colin Powell who is the great grandson of Republican President William Howard Taft.
Jim Haynes, chief legal adviser to Donald Rumsfeld in the Pentagon.
John Bellinger, chief legal adviser to Condoleezza Rice
and finally then U.S Attorney General, John Ashcroft.
The meetings were to assure Goldsmith that what the U.S. and England were about to do in Iraq was legal under International Law. Even British military leaders like Admiral Sir Michael Boyce, the former Chief of the defense Staff demanded legal cover for following orders of the higher ups in the government in starting the Iraq war. He said "'I wanted to make sure that we had this anchor which has been signed by the government law officer ... "It may not stop us from being charged, but, by God, it would make sure other people were brought into the frame as well."
That is one smart military man too bad the poor soldiers like Lyndie England did not have the smarts to get such authorization. Because as so often happens with the Bush/Cheney administration the buck stops with someone else and they are the ones who get screwed..
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